Not only is Les Moore “filled with great wit but also tremendous melancholies”…sister girl, he is a tiger in bed! Yes, folks, today we are invited to imagine Les in the throes of the sex act. Of course, the “awkward moment” that Lisa’s referencing could be one of those occasions when “Little Les” refuses to, “uh,” stand at attention? And Les cries out “this never happened when I was with Lisa!”?
Previously on Funky Winkerbean:
I don’t know about you, reader, but I was so sure that yesterday’s postmortem, backhanded “I love you” to Cayla would serve to finally close a number of plot threads: the existence of the Lisa tapes, Les’ perpetual grief, and even Cayla’s second-class second wife status. I expected today’s strip to be a wacky Sunday throwaway: a Scapegoat football gag, perhaps, or hijinks with Cody and Owen, before Monday we maybe check in with Pete and Darin in Hollywood.
But Lisa’s not done with us, folks. And while I am loathe to deliver spoilers, and try to dissuade my fellow authors from doing the same, I must warn you: this goes on into tomorrow and this week. The story of a woman who, faced with a lingering, wasting, terminal illness, feels compelled to spend her last days on this earth recording messages for those she will leave behind. Lisa on Les: “He’s filled with great wit…” Certainly Les thinks this to be so. The rest of us see a pretentious douchebag. No wonder he misses this woman so.
For what it’s worth: Batiuk continues his laxity when it comes to using the photo album corner visual cue to depict events in the past. Could he be signaling to us that Lisa is in fact, somehow, still alive???
He’s been spending a lot of time in the past, Batiuk has, dating to this past spring when Les got yoked into being reunion chairman. The reunion committee meetings reacquainted us with Junebug and Barry Balederman, and set the stage for a Lisa tribute. The reunion itself of course was the setting for the time pool silliness, in which the Act I cast were trotted out to meet their present-day counterparts (uh, sorry Lisa!). We’ve had a couple Sophmoric Sightings sightings. And speaking of sightings, we saw Les sharing the park bench again with Lisa’s ghost. And speaking of Lisa, we’ve once again dragged out those damned VHS tapes , this time to bake ’em and digitize ’em and preserve ’em for. Ever.
Along the way, Batiuk has of late altered his visual shorthand: the flashback scenes retain their photo album corners but are in full color instead of washed out sepia. Like the central triptych of today’s strip, which offers a perfectly passable gag and which for all we know is a redraw of a published strip from that era. Compare and contrast Coach Jockstrap’s humorous, deadpan style with that of his protege Coach Bushka, who harangues his players with Crankshaftian malaprops.
Looks like His Craziness is tackling the Digital Lisa project starting with Volume One, Tape One: the Lisa we see onscreen still looks pretty hale and hearty. “I want you to have these so you’ll remember me…” Because if I don’t spend huge chunks of the precious time I have left on this earth delivering rambling lectures into a camcorder, I’ll be forgotten?
File this whole setup under “Batiuk Aims for Heartwarming and Hits Creepy.” Harry’s face is wayyy too close to the monitor in panel one, perchance to appreciate the enhanced quality of his baked videotape. And the white gloves, what’s he slipping these on for? “This calls for white gloves! And some lube…”
…is what I imagined Crazy Harry to be saying in today’s panel 1, because “baking” video cassettes is something I’d never heard of. Turns out that magnetic recording tape uses a glue, or “binder”, to hold the oxide particles to the tape. Over time, moisture can affect the binder and cause the tape to “shed” its magnetic coating. So baking the tape at low temperature for an extended period removes the moisture, improving playback quality while lessening possible wear and tear to the playback equipment.
Son of Stuck Funky 
